Undisciplining the university through shared purpose, practice, and place

Abstract

Interdisciplinary scholarship and education remains elusive at modern universities, despite efforts at both the individual and institutional levels. The objective of this paper is to identify the main motivations that bring different disciplines together in joint research and identify some of the obstacles to that coming together. Here we propose that shared purpose (why do I participate?), practice (how do we interact?), and place (where do we interact?) are, in descending order, the most important drivers for what we call “undisciplinary” research in an interaction of different disciplines. Through unstructured workshops we found the choice of participants (who participates?), aspects of time (when do we interact?), and especially the research topics and focus (what are we working on?), to be less important for individual faculty engagement. Metaphor analysis obtained during a charrette-style workshop with 13 faculty from multiple disciplines suggested “inter-epistemological ways of knowing” rather than fields of study to move us from disciplinary to interdisciplinary to undisciplinary scholarship and education. Specifically, the broad intent (why do we participate?) was found to increase the impact of undisciplinary approaches that served as drivers for engagement. These lessons learned from a series of workshops were put to the test at an experimental center that clarified the importance of both synchronous and asynchronous interactions in a common space large enough to allow these and located outside the university. Despite the valuable insights gained in what undisciplinary interaction may look like in a center, it remained clear that space design must start by mapping out why and how individuals in different disciplines may want to interact at a given institution to generate buy-in and build the foundation for continuous refinement of an institutional strategy.